


How to Start the Time War

by babybel



Series: stuff inspired by my first listen-through of gallifrey [4]
Category: Doctor Who, Gallifrey (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Angst, Audio: 06.03 Ascension, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, a little? i guess?, aaa it's so much to deal with it's just so much.., hints of leela/narvin/romana but not enough for a tag, it's more just like. holy shit look at the guilt narvin must be suffering for this, poor narvin :(
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:14:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26500456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babybel/pseuds/babybel
Summary: The futility of it, that might have been what was hitting him so hard. If Romana was actually gone forever, and he'd gotten her back, then surely he could weather whatever storm would come of it. But it had been for nothing. It had been fornothing.And this wasn't the kind of messing around with the web of time that you could just get back up and walk away from.-elaboration on the 'holy shit narvin started the time war' scene
Series: stuff inspired by my first listen-through of gallifrey [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1644265
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17





	How to Start the Time War

**Author's Note:**

> bro i can't stop thinking about this scene..... would literally Hate to be narvin lmao :(

It had been crazy how easy it was. He, rulebook Narvin, stick-in-the-mud Narvin, non-interference Narvin, had broken the most serious law ever laid down by the temporal powers. He’d done the kind of thing he used to punish in his old CIA job. The kind of thing it had been up to him to stop. And yet he hadn’t given it a second thought. He’d barely even given it a first thought before waking that poor sod up and sending him off through time to create an inevitable paradox, and probably a dangerous one at that. The thing was, it was about Romana. 

He’d been hit with an immense sense of loss, immediate and choking, because Romana’d trapped herself in the Matrix with those Daleks forever. Her office would stay empty. They’d never laugh at council members together again; he’d never get to hear her laugh. Leela would stop smiling that beautiful smile she had. And he, he’d have lost one of the only people in the universe - scratch that, the multiverse - who he loved, and more than that, who he trusted. Life without Romana was unimaginable. He couldn’t do it. 

He had even said it, to Leela:  _ “I don’t think I can go on without Romana.”  _ And it had been the truth. He couldn’t. It wasn’t possible. So he’d woken Valyes up and sent him on that insanely foolish mission, and all without caring. Of course he couldn’t care; he couldn’t even breathe until Romana was back. 

And whatever Valyes had said and whatever the Doctor had done, it worked. He walked into Romana’s office and there she was, smiling, laughing at a disbelieving comment from Leela. 

She was tired, so tired he could see it on her face and hear it in her voice, but she was here, and alive. That was what mattered. That made it all worth it. Whatever paradoxes came of it, whatever harm it did to the Daleks, whatever anger it instilled in them, it was worth it. The skin by Romana’s eyes crinkled when she smiled, and she was smiling now; of course it was worth it. 

“But- how-?” Leela was stammering, trying to find an explanation for Romana’s miraculous survival. 

Narvin had planned on not telling them, and he was still intent on not mentioning specifics, but he figured he’d just let them know he took care of it. That they could trust him to keep the three of them together and alive and maybe even safe, at least now that they were back home. “I sent-”

“It wasn’t me, it never was.” Romana spoke over him, still smiling, almost still breathless from the altercation with the Daleks. She rested a hand on Leela’s shoulder. “Trey and Pandora, they were projections of me, living within the Matrix. I expect the place is just dotted with them now, here and there. Little Romanas, accruing over the years.”

“Yes, but-” Leela frowned, still confused. 

“The me that went into the Matrix with Trey and the Daleks,” Romana explained, “was just another projection.” Then she broke out into a grin. “And they fell for it! They fell for it.” 

Leela was smiling too now. “You were never gone, then? It was just a trick?”

“Yes!” Romana often got sort of giddy when they’d just survived something they shouldn’t have. “It was simple, actually, and it-”

Leela cut her off with a hug, murmuring, “I am glad that you are back.” 

“I never left,” Romana replied, rubbing Leela’s back. 

Narvin stood, a step behind Leela and a step to the side, and he was sure his hearts had stopped. Seeing Romana again was reassuring, of course it was, but he’d gone entirely cold. He was so intensely filled with a sense of regret, a sense of fear, even, that his hands began to lose feeling. He kept trying to tell himself that nothing would come of it. Nothing would come of it. Everything would be fine. But his mouth was dry, and he felt like he was hearing and seeing things from underwater, drowning in dread.

The futility of it, that might’ve been what was hitting him so hard. If Romana was actually gone forever, and he’d gotten her back, then he could surely weather whatever storm came of it. But it had been for nothing. It had been for  _ nothing. _ And it wasn’t the kind of messing around with the web of time that you could just get back up and walk away from. 

“I did-” He stopped, voice giving out halfway through. He flexed his hands. Pins and needles, he had pins and needles going up his arms. Of course he’d have a physical reaction to this, and wondered if he’d end up lost in a panic attack on top of everything else. He cleared his throat, and looked up at Romana. 

Her smile had faded; she was searching his face. 

Leela had let go of her, and she too was frowning at him. 

“You did…?” Romana prompted. She sounded worried. 

And oh, how far he’d fallen. Not only had he broken the basest non-interference law, and not only had he broken it in a way that would fatally disrupt the web of time, cause something so catastrophic that- no, he wouldn’t even think about it. Not even all that, but he’d also dropped enough facades for Romana to read him in the blink of an eye. He swallowed. “I thought you were gone. I couldn’t- I did something. I interfered.” He overannunciated the word. 

“Well, I didn’t think you had it in you,” Romana replied, but there was tension in her voice and no smile in her eyes; she was waiting for the other foot to drop. 

“Hm.” He held one of his hands out, watched tremors course through it. “I did.” He looked back up at them both, and he could see it on their faces: they were scared. 

Leela reached out and took his hand. She held on tight, almost too tight. 

“Narvin,” Romana asked quietly, “what did you do?”

“I couldn’t- I couldn’t- you were gone, and I just- Leela and I-” He couldn’t breathe. “Look for yourself. Can’t you feel the timelines changing?”

Romana closed her eyes, sensing. 

It was an almost overwhelming change. Time Lords, tuned in as they were to the natural progression of time, always felt even the slightest retroactive tweaks in the timeline. This, in comparison, was a complete system overhaul. Not just one timeline changing, not just Gallifrey, but nearly every planet in every star system in the galaxy. No, it was wider than that. In the universe. This was massive. A dizzying, sickening change. It felt so wrong, carried so much foreboding, so much warning, that Narvin might have stumbled or fallen just standing there feeling it happen had Leela’s hand not found his back. 

When he opened his eyes, Leela had pulled both him and Romana into a half hug, a little triangle made of the three of them. He closed a hand in Romana’s robes, and on Leela’s shoulder. 

“So you weren’t lying,” Romana said, tired, and now scared as well. “You interfered.” 

Narvin thought he might be sick with the vertigo of those changes in reality, happening so vastly and so quickly. Or, no. The vertigo was bad, but if he was sick, it would be with guilt. He’d done this. He’d done this. And he’d done it for nothing. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. 

“What is it?” Leela asked. “What has happened?”

“Something’s coming,” Romana answered. “Something- immense. The entire web of time just went through the biggest revision in recorded history, I believe. It’ll reach us soon, I don’t doubt that.” 

“Romana,” Narvin tried. His chest was hurting, the wish to go back and do it again, do it differently, avoid it, overpowering everything else. The fact that if he’d just known a smidgen more information, if he’d just waited a bloody second before going off and doing it, there’d be nothing to worry about was the singular worst thing he’d ever known. And he was so, so aware of it; he couldn’t forget it. 

Romana held a hand to the side of Narvin’s head, and then, after a minute, pulled him closer and kissed his temple. 

That felt like the final nail in the coffin, because that meant the only thing she had to say was that she was sorry, and that it would kill her to imagine being in his shoes. His vision was blurring, and he blamed it on all those timeline changes. It was enough to send any Time Lord to bed with a headache at the best of times. The rest of the planet was lucky they were still comatose. 

“But surely it will be all right,” Leela said, a questioning, worried edge to her tone. “We are together. We will be able to face whatever this is together.” 

“We don’t have much of a choice,” Romana replied, voice burdened with dry humour in that way of hers that suggested doomsday. 

Narvin wasn’t sure how much time they had left, but it surely wasn’t enough to fit in all the apologies he had to make. He let Leela guide him over to the window that took up one side of Romana’s office, looking out over Gallifrey. 

They stood, the three of them, side by side by side, and took in the rust red sky, the buildings, the warm amber tones of home. 

He wondered how long it would last. He also wondered perhaps the worst thing in the universe to wonder: how much time he had before Leela and Romana realized they couldn’t forgive him. 

They hadn’t realized yet, though. Leela’s hand still rested on his hip, her arm around his waist, and Romana still looked sad for him rather than furious at him. As always, the only sense of belonging he’d ever felt came from standing next to the both of them, and that hadn’t changed yet. He doubted it ever would, no matter what else did. 

They stood together, felt the cosmos shift around them, and waited for the storm to break. 

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr @lesbiandonnanoble !


End file.
